The present invention relates to processing techniques for transferring data. More particularly, the present invention relates to systems and methods for using detection of physical movement for document sharing between computing devices.
The use and proliferation of computing devices has become widespread. In particular, there are a number of small computing devices such as personal digital assistants (PDAs), smart phones, tablet computers, digital cameras and laptop computers. Such portable computing devices often include different communication mechanisms such as Bluetooth®, WiFi or infrared. However, even though these devices have the capability to communicate with other devices, establishing communication is difficult, cumbersome and not secure. For example, many PDAs include infrared transceivers, but using them requires that the transceivers be aligned in line of sight, each device must be separately initiated, and passwords and codes must be exchanged or input by the user to create a secure connection between devices. Similarly, establishing a communications link between devices using WiFi or Bluetooth® is very cumbersome and requires a number of manual steps including registering the devices to each other, accessing the network, locating the other machine, and each of these steps must be performed manually with input from the user.
While email can be used to transfer data and files between devices, it requires such devices have an email client and a transmission mechanism. However, a greater problem is that typing an e-mail address into a phone or a PDA with a touch pad is error-prone and slow. Thus, email is not a simple and effective way to transfer files. Furthermore, there are security concerns with email.
Some devices, like memory sticks, include other interfaces such as a universal serial bus (USB) connector. In an old fashioned manual file transfer way, such memory sticks can be manually connected to a device, files transferred to the memory stick, the memory stick removed, the memory stick manually connected to a second device and the files loaded the second device. However, this manual process defeats many of the reasons for having hand-held, portable and easy to use computing devices.
Yet another problem with existing communication between computing devices is security. For example, in a wireless network there may be a number of devices coupled to an access point for a network. Thus, any files shared over the network will be accessible all devices, known and unknown, that are connected to the access point of the network. Rather than broadcasting data or making a file accessible over the network to many other devices, the user more often wants to transfer the document to a single recipient/user and thus a single device coupled to the network. Again, the existing art does not provide a mechanism to do that easily and intuitively without having to manually set up encryption, set a password, identify a recipient or a variety of additional steps that need to be done manually by the user.